Dutch National Breastfeeding Conference

Since the beginning of LLL
in the Netherlands (Europe), there has been some communication between
LLL and other Dutch organizations active in the field of breastfeeding.
The Netherlands is a small country with 16 million citizens and 200,000
babies born a year. The thinking behind starting this consultation between
the organizations was (and is) that it is better to work with each other
than against each other as we are all fishing in the same small pond.

Initially, we started consultation
with an annual meeting between the board of LLL Netherlands and the
board of the Vereniging Borstvoeding Natuurlijk (Dutch Breastfeeding
Association). We tried to find common interests to work on together,
but it was difficult. There was a lot of mistrust toward eachother.
We once tried to organize a conference together, but that attempt failed
in the early stages because we could not come to agreement on several
issues such as finances, speakers, topics, and presence of babies.

Over the course of the years,
more organizations were established. We formed an informal joint venture,
consisting of five organizations, called Samenwerkende Borstvoeding
Organisaties (SBO). In English SBO means Cooperative Breastfeeding Organizations.
The members of the SBO are LLL Netherlands, the Dutch Breastfeeding
Association, the Dutch Lactation Consultants Association, The Dutch
IBFAN (International Baby Food Action Network) organization, and the
Dutch BFHI (Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative) organization. Very slowly,
we grew from mistrust toward willingness to cooperate with each other
where possible. The SBO meets about three times a year and topics of
discussion include cooperation with the government, World Breastfeeding
Week, and joint actions in response to articles in the media.

Two years ago the idea came
up to organize a joint national conference for health professionals.
LLL Netherlands had some past experience with organizing conferences.
The Dutch Breastfeeding Association and the Dutch Lactation Consultants
Association each organized their own conference every two years, taking
turns so there was one conference a year. The response to the idea of
a joint conference was positive, and it was decided to hold one between
September 27 through October 3 during World Breastfeeding Week 2004.

This decision resulted in
recruiting members for the conference committee followed by a lot of
planning, negotiating, and finding ways to reach consensus on various
issues. This was not always easy to accomplish. There were discussions
about finances and our target audience, which affected who would speak
and whether or not we would have general sessions and parallel sessions.

There were discussions about
having children in the meeting rooms. Some organizations were against
this while others were in favor. It was decided that babies up to one
year old were allowed to be in the meeting rooms and that children up
to two years old were to be taken care of in a nursery.

There were also discussions
about the suitability of exhibitors. They had to meet the conditions
of the WHO Code. The conference committee met once a month for one and
a half years to resolve all of these issues.

The result of this hard work
was the first SBO conference on September 30, 2004 in Amersfoort, a
centrally located city in the Netherlands. There was a full program
from 9:30 am until 4:30 pm with general sessions and parallel sessions
to meet the needs of all levels of health professionals, from home nurses
up to pediatricians. Of course, members of the five organizations were
welcome, too. Topics included introducing solids, baby-led weaning,
images of breastfeeding, cosleeping, and more.

The conference was a big
success and sold out with almost 800 participants. All participating
organizations did an enormous amount of work and we’re proud and
happy with the results. The keywords throughout the planning process
were trust and respect. It was great to see how this led to "strength
through diversity." Our next step is to evaluate the conference
and decide whether there will be another one in two years.

The full conference program
can be found on the Web site of the joint venture of the five Dutch
Breastfeeding organizations:www.borstvoeding.nl/congres2004/programma.htm.
Page last edited 2007-10-14 09:31:08 UTC.